In Dominican Popular Music, Fear of Witchcraft Persists

One of my favorite Dominican artists is Amarfis, who calls his band: "the attack band." Though Amarfis sings about everyday themes, and is far from a religious singer, he is unique because he embraces Afro-spiritualism in his fast-beat merengue. Amarfis' lyrics are more suited to a voodoo ritual than a salsa floor, but somehow he has managed to successfully incorporate Afro-religious lyrics into a modern, danceable rhythm. One Amarfis song that truly embodies the Dominican Republic's Afro-spiritual, musical heritage is the song Yemayá. Yemayá is a Loa, an intermediary for God, in voodoo.

 

Yemayá: quítame lo malo y tíralo en el mar (coro)

Fui donde una bruja

Y me dijo, "Amarfis, tú estás saladito."

La bruja me dijo, "te quieren hacer daño."

"Hay muchos envidiosos que te quieren abajo."

"Te daré una cosa que te cuidará."

"Para el que te tire, no te haga mal."

Aléjalo de mi (coro)

A los envidiosos. A los falsos.

Y a todos esos Judas.

Y para el merenguero que me quiera hacer daño,

Dios se la pagará!

Cuidate!

 

Yemaja: take the evil from me and cast it to the sea (chorus)

I went to a witch

And she told me, "Amarfis, you're under a spell."

"There are many jealous individuals who want to see you down."

"I will give you something that will protect you."

"So that whoever may speak ill of you shall do you no evil."

Cast them away from me (chorus)

To all the jealous ones. All the fakes.

And all the Judas.

And for the merengueros that wants to hurt me,

God shall repay you!

Take care!

 

Another Amarfis song that I personally enjoy is Papá Bocó, or Papá Candelo, another Loa in voodoo. Candelo always says, "Bonswa a la societé."

 

Con un retrato pa'bajo

Y la candela en la boca

Con una vela en la mano

Y rabo de gato en la otra

Y un pañuelo colora'o

Yo tengo un Loa que me ilumina

Y me protege de la gente

Con cuatro velas de a centavo

Y un poquito de aguardiente

La bruja hace su trabajo,

Con un tabaco en la boca

Se dan cuatro zapatazos

Para conseguir la muchacha

Y un pañuelo colora'o

Se cruzan dos alfileres

Pa' conseguir las mujeres

Se mete cebo en los sobres

Ai, bruja, brujita, consigueme esa muchacha!

 

With a portrait upside-down

And fire in the mouth

With a candle in the hand

And a cat's tail in the other

And a red handkerchief

I have a Loa that illuminates me

And protects me from people

With four one-cent candles

And a little bit of aguardiente

The witch does her work,

With a tobacco in her mouth

Smacks the shoe four times

To get the girl

And a red handkerchief

You cross two pins

To get the women

Put wax in the envelope

Oh, witch, little witch, get me that girl!

Why I Skipped My High School Graduation

I was my high school class' valedictorian. I was supposed to give a speech to the 150 or so students in the graduating class and their family members. For my graduation, however, I was in another country.

 

To say that I had an extreme fear of public speaking would be an understatement. I was petrified of having to write something and recite it in front of a crowd, so I simply decided early on during my senior year that I wouldn't bother going to graduation. There was the excuse of money, and more conveniently that I was to meet the Dominican vice-president in recognition of my academic achievements at around the same time I was to graduate.

 

However, the most important aspect of my excuse -- at least to myself -- was that most of the students in my graduating class were virtual strangers to me; at least 50 were heldovers from previous classes. My freshman year, there were over 600 students in my class. I saw with my very own eyes how that number dwindled to less than 100 over a period of 4 years. One Dominican friend, Nairobi, broke his neck in a motorcycle accident. A couple of friends simply disappeared. Another forgot his box cutter from work inside of his bookbag and was expelled under the school's zero tolerance policy, despite our school being vocational and his good record of handling tools inside of the school far more dangerous than a box cutter. I lost faith in the education system's inflexible tyranny that day.

 

Other friends were arrested -- by the armed police officers always present in the hallways -- and transferred to special schools, but most simply failed out. I've seen almost none of those friends who didn't make it past senior year, highlighting the reality that 5/6th of the class was not there by the end of our 4th year. Beyond classmates I saw personally fail, the mathematical reality of the complete failure that schools in the Bronx represented was something that always made me want to run away.

 

When the final days to register for graduation started approaching, and I had to finally decide if I was to truly skip my graduation, I gave myself two choices: I could either speak angrily about the anger I felt, or simply never return. In the end, I never even bothered to pick up my high school diploma, and often have nightmares where I learn that I failed and never found out about it. Besides that, I feel that it was probably better for me to allow many years to past before I reflected on the reality of my educational experience in the Bronx.

 

There were a lot of good teachers, but they were often overworked and distracted by students who simply didn't want to learn. It's not easy to resist constant social pressure, so I can understand that after a long time many teachers would eventually also lose the will to teach. The reality is that I picked up most of what I know outside of school. I guess that when you spend all of your free time behind a computer and on certain websites, you pick up a lot of what you need in life, especially the sarcasm.

 

But I guess in life I needed to be motivated, and that was something that didn't go around much in the Bronx. There was a general feeling of doom, that we would end up in prison. To say that we were treated like criminals would be an understatement. My school had many armed guards before Sandy Hook -- ten years ago -- and it didn't feel safe. It felt like an oppressive police state. Every morning we were subjected to x-ray machines, metal detectors, pat-downs if the metal detector went off, ID swipes, and possible punishment if we did not wear our identification at all times. To cut cost, the machines were turned off at ten and students were prevented entry after that, meaning that since my classes started at ten, arriving even one minute late would force me to be absent the entire day.

 

During my junior year, a student brought in a drano bomb, causing it to explode loudly in one of the classrooms. Though no one was hurt, a SWAT team swarmed the school in full force and the entire student body was subsequently prohibited from bringing in any type of bottle or food item. It was at around the same time that Bloomberg decided to monopolize the vending machines in school with a single company's high-sugar products, but it's not like I had any money to buy food inside of the school anyway, so it doesn't matter. What really irked me was the food ban. As a vegan, I couldn't eat any of the food in the cafeteria. Hell, I probably wouldn't feed the food they gave me to a dog anyway, much less a person.

 

So, I was bitter, and I was afraid of talking in front of a crowd. In the end, those two elements coalesced to keep me from going to my high school graduation.  All I wanted to do was scream at the injustice that I felt at being treated like a criminal and starved on a daily basis. They told me some time ago that they were shutting down my school, but from the way it looks over here, there are many more like it springing up all over the country. Zero tolerance, barred windows, armed guards, and police state equipment won't make American schools as successful as the ones in Northern Europe. On the contrary, they will perpetuate the cycle of violence and victimization that has characterized America's history of racial and gender inequality.

Pyeongyang: The Amsterdam of East Asia?

When I was in South Korea, I was acquainted with a Dutch individual who worked as a teacher at the Dutch embassy. This individual had an interesting operation in his Itaewon apartment: he had some 40 plants growing and ready to supply his people. Eventually he was caught, and the South Korean government was not at all too pleased, to say the least.

 

The South, fortunately, has a mild punitive system compared to the North's brutal gulags, but it is not easy to predict exactly how the North would react if they found a plantation in a foreigner's house. We can't predict simply because there are too few foreigners living in North Korea, but it seems like they don't do much to the locals.

 

High cannabis use seems to be one of the North's best kept secrets. North Koreans are very well aware of the negative perception that East Asians and many around the world harbor against the plant, and are always very careful to suppress outside knowledge of the country's rampant love for the crop.

 

Cannabis is generally seen as a cheaper substitute to the already massively cheap North Korean cigarettes. Citizens reportedly use copies of the Rodong Sinmun, the state newspaper, to roll joints. I had long suspected that cannabis use was a very high possibility in the North, considering the high use of meth and the harsh penalties handed out for its use. I believed that the government would also likewise oppress all cannabis users, but travelers to the North have reported entire roads lined with cannabis plants.

 

However, don't start packing your lighter and President Kim Il-Sung pin just yet. The North won't let anyone travel without a guide and a minder, so you won't likely get to see what life is really like for the average North Korean. Though repressed in almost every way, the people in The Democratic People's Republic of Korea have one freedom that their South Korean counterparts don't have: the freedom light up a spliff after a very relaxing 16 hours at the Socialist Utopia Reeducation Center.

 

The two countries do seem to have one thing in common, however: most pharmacist will just give you whatever you want if you ask for it in English. A friend who traveled to Pyeongyang reported that he was able to get a very nice dose of morphine just by asking for it at the pharmacy. A perplexed woman at the counter simply bowed her head and handed over whatever he politely asked for while saying, "doctor in Canada give."

The Most Dangerous Man Alive

As I write, scores of police and federal officers are conducting house-to-house searches in Big Bear, California. Since police officers are being targeted, the police are rallying around each other and placing the finger near the trigger. Should Chris Dorner successfully continue to wage, as he described, "asymmetrical" warfare against the LAPD, America will descend to tyranny and martial law. 

It is uncertain whether Dorner is working alone or has recruited disgruntled individuals to wage his war. Given the nature of his writing, it is likely that he will attract many people who have suffered at the hands of the police. Further, the very dangerous possibility exists that attacks will be attributed to Dorner when in fact no ballistics or DNA analysis have been conducted. 

The DHS has just recently purchased 23 million bullets, adding to its already billion plus arsenal. Further, the DHS has purchased 7,000 bullet-proof checkpoint booths with "stop-and-go" lights. Internal memos circulated and drills conducted have warned employees to prepare for potential unrest in the event of an Obama reelection and continued economic uncertainty. The agency has particularly highlighted the danger of ex-military.

Make no mistake about it, Dorner is a terrorist! This is, of course, if the manifesto that is attributed to him was truly written by him. According to current United States law as it is written, Dorner is liable to be indefinitely detained without trial under the National Defense Authorization Act. Furthermore, he might be the first American to be taken out with a drone within US soil. The fate of the United States is now in the hands of one man. Should Dorner evade capture and wage a prolonged campaign, the full descent to tyranny will be complete. Don't fear, the government has prepared for a long time, and they have our best interests at heart. 

The Missing Trillions

It was a casually-delivered announcement on a typical September 10 when the Pentagon revealed it had lost 2.3 trillion dollars. It was a staggering sum and the public outrage promised to be high. However, 9/11 happened the next day and the missing trillions were forgotten. 

No one has ever been held accountable or made to withstand scrutiny when it comes to the lost of those 2.3 trillion dollars. Evidence, unfortunately for the American public, was destroyed when that massive 767 was crashed into the Pentagon by Islamic maniacs. 

One would consider that the start of the two decade war against Al-Qaeda and associated forces would force the government to tighten its financial belt; but that is very far from the case, however. The Pentagon delivered plane-fulls of money to Afghan officials. Over 60 billion dollars cannot be accounted for in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

The story is very disturbing in Iraq, where the government cannot account for over 12 billion dollars. In what represented the biggest cash airlift in history, Iraq's money was stolen from its people. It seems that the Pentagon has a problem with keeping track of cash, and also black money. 

The Pentagon's black budget of 51 billion dollars -- combined with the Military Intelligence Program of 19 billion, and the National Intelligence Program of around 50 billion -- means that the government will dish out more than 120 billion dollars in black money. The US government black budget is 50 billion dollars higher than Russia's military budget and just lower than the Chinese. That 120 billion dollar figure, I should add, is only an estimation since the Pentagon has another classified program where the budgets don't add up with the programs. 

It was Eisenhower who warned about the military-industrial complex in his farewell address. The very last thing he did as president was to warn the nation of what was to come. And indeed, if the government can mismanage so much money and receive almost no public scrutiny, one can only wonder how much little we know about other classified projects.